Post (support)

“ The sub-office is usually managed by a man or woman who has other visible means of support. In the vast majority of cases the sub-office is a shop. And comprising as the ranks of sub-postmasters do all sorts and conditions of men, it is not surprising if we find more variety among this class of official than among the Head Postmasters. The Head Postmaster is a Civil Servant; he has a tradition to keep up, and he looks at official matters with a sort of professional eye. ”

“ It is peculiarly necessary that a postman should, before all things, be honest. By this trifling obstacle is the magnificently specious scheme of substituting Post Office employment for the treadmill frustrated. ”

“ I am happy to find matters are managed so impartially in the post-office here. Nothing like a public cant for making matters find their true level. Tell the postmaster, then, I’ll keep the letter, and the rather, as it happens, by good luck, to be intended for me. ”

“ In her mind's eye she saw, with such clearness that her actual eye could scarcely add aught to the confirmation, the thin foreign envelope, the green stamps, the familiar superscription. She went cold and she went hot. Her ears burned, and there were strange noises opening inside them like whistles and hummings, as though in protest to the insupportable outer silence, the imperturbable calm of the Post Office. But the postman was watching her, and the postmaster from his high deal stool. ”

“ In the considerable army of servants who carry on the work of the Post-office, embracing all grades from the Postmaster-General to the rural postman, are to be found individuals of every temperament, character of mind, and disposition—the candid, the simple, the astute, the wary ”

“ Postmen allis knocks so as to waken babies and then they tries to look as if they didn't no as baby was behind the door. If the postman doesn't bring your letters you can summons him, thats why they're so frightened. ”

“ It is not in human nature that the gentlemen of the Post Office should view your plan with friendly eyes. If they are good-natured persons, as I dare say they are, they will forgive you in time; but they have much to overlook. That a stranger should attempt to understand the arcana of our system of postage better than those whose duty it was to attain to such knowledge, was bad enough; that he should succeed, was still worse; but that he should persuade the country and the Parliament that he had succeeded is an offence very difficult to pardon. ”

“ Postal spirit, incomparably above public spirit, exceeds in brilliancy of resource and invention the ablest romance-writers. When the post gets hold of a letter, worth, to it, from three to ten sous, and does not immediately know where to find the person to whom that letter is addressed, it displays a financial anxiety only to be met with in very pertinacious creditors. ”

“ A postman, a sorting-clerk, or a letter-sorter, if he be dismissed from his employment cannot pick up his bag of tools and offer himself to the next workshop, for the simple reason that he has no tools, and his trade is one of such a peculiar nature that it is wanted nowhere outside the Post-Office. ”

“ I have had many things to consider and act upon, of the first importance and which admitted of no delay.
I hope you fully appreciate that the subject broached in your letter gives rise to many anxious reflections.
There are official documents and papers on file in the Post-Office Department, which relate to the subject, and which having been presented to me have perplexed and troubled me.
May I say that I want to do just the right thing, and at the same time gratify a host of kind friends and good men of whom you are an honored representative? ”

“ The wish to correspond with their friends may not be so strong, or so general, as the desire for fermented liquors, but facts have come to my knowledge tending to show that but for the high rate of postage, many a letter would be written, and many a heart gladdened too, where the revenue and the feelings of friends now suffer alike. ”

“ When some one with real sympathy in his heart has taken the trouble to select and send flowers, or has gone to the house and offered what service he might, or has in a spirit of genuine regard, written a personal letter, the receipt of words composed by a stationer and dispatched by a professional secretary is exactly as though his outstretched hand had been pushed aside. ”

“ But shall an author be so shabby as to abridge his sentiments, for the sake of postage, merely because a post-office clerk weighs them more according to his own than the postal rates? And am I not encouraged to the opposite course—that of protracting my emotions—by the electoral, princely, and city-benches in Ratisbon, inasmuch as the said benches by an imperial recess allow me a deduction of two thirds of my postage for printed matter, in order, as they hope, to give encouragement to literature and to sentiment? ”

“ You will recollect that in my late correspondence with the Postmaster-General I took the liberty to remind his Lordship of the promise under which I was induced to accept my present post, of the serious obstacles to improvements as well as of the great danger of insubordination in the office arising from my present anomalous position, and of the acknowledged fulfilment of the only condition on which my promotion was to depend. ”

“ The English poor oftener, as we have already seen, show their unbounded confidence in the sagacity of the officers of the Post-Office by leaving out some essential part of the address of a letter, but very seldom writing too much. ”

“ To the outsider the business of the Department may seem to consist mainly of the simple work of receiving and paying away money, but the correspondence with the public on matters arising out of their accounts is a huge item in the day's work. ”

“ First, the person who now holds the office of post master in our place, is totally unfit for the business. He was got in by a clique of interested individuals, who used underhanded measures for the purpose, and succeeded in their object only by blinding the eyes of the Department to the real character of the man, and the wishes of the people. Not one man in fifty is in favor of the present incumbent; and those who are, turn out generally to be persons who seldom write or receive letters, and have little or no business in connexion with the post-office. ”

“ To the postmaster of Rochester, Whitley writes:—"I hear there is great neglect in your sending out of letters, and that there is a great abundance of them scattered about your house, especially in your chamber and upon the tester of your bed. This shows want of order in your business. You should get some room apart to be your office, in which only you should bring your mails, open and close them, and where you should sort letters, and let nobody come into it but yourself." ”

“ If a postman were to deliver the whole of his letters as he went along, not taking the money for any of them, and returned through his walk, and then collected the money, would they not all be delivered much earlier than they are now? ”

“ The question of intention is no longer referable to the private purpose of the writer, whatever might be the fact when letters are given to persons employed in the Post-Office Department, out of the office, for the purpose of being put into it or conveyed by mail. ”

“ Yet so long does it take to root out an old association of ideas in the mind of the British public, that a postmaster is still regarded in the minds of many people as merely a man who sells stamps and perhaps fancy articles. ”

“ Some of the older country postmen say that in by-gone days the poor people, unable to read themselves, considered it part of a postman's duty to read their letters for them, and they looked for sympathy from the postmen in case of receipt of bad news. The Chew Stoke postman had a walk, in and out, of over twenty miles, and had to carry whatever load there was for the route. ”

“ On the other hand, it is reasonable that those who avail themselves of the conveniences of the post-office, should take pains to inform themselves on those points which it is necessary they should know, in order to avoid giving inconvenience to themselves, and unnecessary trouble to those appointed to serve them. ”

“ Your uniform kindness has been unsurpassed by that of any other friend, and while it is true that the war does not so greatly add to the difficulties of your department as to those of some others, it is yet much to say, as I most truly can, that in the three years and a half during which you have administered the General Post-Office, I remember no single complaint against you in connection therewith. ”

“ To-day the Post Office is no respecter of persons, and the "all swallowing orifice of the pillar-box" receives without favour or distinction the correspondence of the humble with the messages of the mighty. ”

“ At a rate of postage so low as one penny, a great number of explanatory letters on business, and letters on matters of detail, would be written. Occasions are of constant occurrence in which we do not write, and are not written to, because the matter, though important enough to write upon, is not important enough to pay, or to cause others to pay, the postage. I refer here to questions as to the mode of conveyance of goods, as to the colour or pattern of articles ordered, or to an ambiguous or an illegible phrase in a letter received, and a thousand other matters. ”

“ Another class, fully persuaded of the truth of the principle that "seeing is believing," and unwilling to trust in anything less reliable than their own eyes, deposit their letters with the Agent rather than in the post-office, in order to avoid the innumerable perils which might beset them in their passage from the custody of the post master to that of the Agent! ”

“ The Post-Office official often, however, and in spite of himself, learns more than he cares to know. "For," as the writer continues, "a great deal can be known from the outside of a letter, where there is no disposition to pry into the enclosure. ”

“ Talk to your business men about it; the Postmaster General is going to win this fight because he is in the right. Tell the business men that the Postmaster General feels that he is entitled not only to their moral but their active support. ”

“ A postman, when he has once started on his walk, must not go to his own house or to any other except to deliver a letter; he must not smoke on duty; he must not deliver letters to owners in the streets, but only at the houses to which they are addressed; he must not put letters under doors even if asked to do so; he must not take letters from the public for registration; he must carry no other missives than those that have been regularly posted; he must not act as a newsagent; must not borrow money from persons on his walk ”

“ That it is of high importance to the success of the Commerce, Manufactures, and Agriculture of this country, and to the promotion of civilization in every form, that communication by post should be swift, certain, and cheap. ”

“ If, unluckily, an epidemical passion for letter writing should rage to such a degree as to overpower all ordinary and extraordinary means of control, even let the pent up spirit lift the safety valve and expand itself in freedom. Or, in more staid language, no longer confine the public to the use of the Post Office, but allow letter writers to choose a mode of transmission for themselves. ”

“ There is still in the rural service a postman who labours under the disabilities of having only one arm and of being unable to read or write. He has not a very extensive delivery, and so his pockets are made to do duty in the place of the faculty of reading. ”

“ Care should be taken in every case to avoid the formation of any opinion until all the facts which it is possible to obtain in regard to it are collected together. It is only from these facts and from the character and antecedents of the parties who may have been [32] concerned in the loss, and not from some suspicion unsupported by facts, that conclusions can with any safety be drawn.
20. All serious cases of loss or abstraction should be at once specially reported to the Postmaster General, and the most prompt action taken thereon. ”

“ One evening, in his quiet simple manner, the blind Postmaster-General presented himself at the General Post-Office unannounced and asked to be taken over the sorting department, and to have things explained to him. The scene was one of bustle and confusion; and the dull roar and the clank of stamping machinery, and the movements of hundreds of [127] men in a confined space, filled the overburdened air. ”

“ You have for many years ranked among the most conspicuous members of the Post Office, which, on several occasions when you have been employed on large and difficult matters, has reaped much benefit from the great abilities which you have been able to place at its disposal; and in mentioning this, I have been especially glad to record that, notwithstanding the many calls upon your time, you have never permitted your other avocations to interfere with your Post Office work, which has been faithfully and indeed energetically performed. ”

“ Yet sub-postmasters do deserve our sympathies. They endure much from an irritable and impatient public. Occasionally, the suffering becomes articulate. “I beg,” says a sub-postmaster, “to report that the man called at the office to-day. I handed him the book, and complied with your instructions. I hope I shall never see him again.” We can almost imagine the painful scene at the counter.
We are often ready enough to complain of the incivility and indifference of the man or woman at the post office, but we don't realise how trying we are to the much-harassed officials. ”